yes breathing really helped me..no medicalised pain relief either. I read before hand that you had to gutturally sound out the breathing and I did and it worked brilliantly. Loved giving birth to dd2 cause of this..helped me ride the pain..perhaps it just gave sthng to focus on, I don't know..it didn't seem to matter as long as it worked. I too had a heavily medicalised first birth with dd1 so it was all new second time around. Wonder how the research can fly int he face of so much anecdotal evidence. Think they maybe need to reearch again..and this comes from a university researcher!